Chapter 129 The Evening Course starts again
Nana quickly healed the injured soldier, something like a fracture was easy for her to heal. Afterwards, Roland let the First Army return to the camp, only the Chief Knight, the witches and several guards were still left at the scene.
With a gloomy face, Roland went to the side of the dead murderer, commanding Carter to cut out the bullets.
The wounds he had to cut were half a finger deep and the lead balls he found were fractured, indicating that people taking the pills would suffer the same wounds as ordinary people.
“Carter, what do you think?” Roland asked.
Carter seemed to be a little upset, most probably he had never expected to be outmaneuvered by a person who had never received any training in swordsmanship, “He just became stronger and faster, it doesn’t seem he realized everything that he could do, I could have cut off his head with the first strike.”
“And if your opponent was a knight?”
“This would…” Carter thought. “If it was against the kind of knights the Duke had, I could just barely handle them, but against the King’s elite knights or the knights of the Cold Wind Ridge, I wouldn’t have been able to parry even one of their strikes.”
Roland didn’t comment, but he thought, the great experts always think the one with the better skills will win the fencing duel, and perhaps Carter’s perception was right, but if they had the same equipment the situation would have dramatically changed. Assuming that the prisoner was also wearing heavy armor, with a helmet and a two-handed sword, Carter wouldn’t have necessarily won so easily.
The pills didn’t only bring a large power upgrade, they are much more multi-faceted. They can even carry stronger heavy armors and weapons, can burst out, run faster and have a much longer endurance on the battlefield. Roland felt he had to correct the assumption he had made during his time in Longsong Stronghold, Similar to adrenaline? No, this pill was much more terrifying than adrenaline, hormones only stimulated the body’s own potential, but this red pill had clearly allowed the prisoner to break through his limits. Especially the speed and momentum he showed as he tried to flee, it was almost comparable to that of heavy cavalry.
The black pill was just as effective; his ribcage was nearly cut open but he didn’t show any sign of it hindering him at all. If he was only a normal person, he would have long since lost his will to fight due to the extreme pain.
If a civilian with only a strength upgrade and pain reduction was already this powerful, then what would a group of trained knights using it look like? Roland had a feeling of uneasiness when he thought back to the offer the High Priest had made.
“Your Highness,” exclaimed Nightingale suddenly, “look at his skin.”
The skin of the prisoner’s hand had turned from its former red to ash-colored, while at the same time it had a large number of folds, looking just like a snake after it shed it skin. When Roland poked against it with the handle of his knife, he discovered that the skin was no longer solid like a muscle, it was rather totally empty to his touch. After cutting the skin, he saw that the subcutaneous fat had completely turned into mucus and it followed with the muscle atrophying.
“It looks just the same as when someone swallows a God’s Stone of Retaliation,” Nightingale turned to look at him with a serious expression on her face. “The pill is made from the same components as the stone.”
It’s unlikely that just swallowing a stone would result in such a growth of power,
Roland thought, so how were they able to do that?
It seems that the pills have very strong side effects, and until now it’s unclear if it’s permanent or if it can be restored, Roland himself was more inclined to the former. If it was the latter, this enhanced version of a drug out of morphine and adrenaline could be called the “God of War”, as long as they were able to recover and took it in batches, it wouldn’t be surprising if the world was dominated by the Church.
Even if the pills only lasted for a short time, and even if the pills have side effects, it’s still better to be on the alert, Roland thought. If the Church begins to support Timothy or Garcia with these, I would have to face an army of drugged fighters.
Even more disturbing is that the Church was even willing to take out such kind of drugs, they didn’t seem to care what happens after the reunification of the Kingdom of Graycastle, how should the new King help them after exploiting this kind of pills? Graycastle’s troops would only become cannon fodder, so the New and Old Holy City would have to send out more of their own troops, and with every continuing fight, the Army of Judges would gradually become worn down.
Unless… they have an even stronger card held back and just don’t care if something like this was to happen.
Coming to this conclusion Roland could only sigh. With his attack on the Longsong Stronghold, he had intended to end his problem of population and capital shortage in Border Town. Afterwards, he could start focusing on developing the education level, the production and the farming process, turning Border Town from a town into a city in a very short time. As for him developing a new weapon systems, he had planned to put it on hold. But now it seems he couldn’t stop the development of the First Army, expanding the First Army, increasing the flintlock production and developing new weapons was now back on top of his priority list, for example a breech-loading rifle with a new kind of bullet.
The mechanism of a breech-loading rifle was actually quite simple, the cachet for the bullet was also quite easy to produce, he could make it out of paper or a very thin copper case.
Only to find for the right powder mixture, Roland still did not have even a trace of a clue. He only knew that the ingredient was called mercury fulminate, according to its literal meaning, the raw materials must have nitric acid and mercury. As for the need to mix it with other materials, he couldn’t remember it. Furthermore, it had a special temperature and humidity requirements, so the chance was relatively high that it would explode in one’s finger if handled carelessly. So, he decided that it would be better to spend a lot of money to recruit a number of alchemists and give them their own laboratory in a secluded corner of Border Town, where they could ponder over the right mixture.
*
After the dinner, Roland took Anna and Scroll back with him to his office.
Now that Border Town financial situation was like a bulging purse, Roland would soon place more than half of his assets into compulsory education, even if it only yield slow results.
An industrial society needed a base of educated civilians, rather than the brute force of illiterates. Without universal education, the rise in population could only change into a burden for the population.
Taking this in consideration, Roland intended from this day on to take some time each evening to start teaching. Only waiting until Scroll had a basic understanding of natural science, while at the same time the town had almost completed its first batch of literacy tasks.
Since Scroll would become the future education pioneer and all-round teacher, Roland naturally taught her everything he had learned during his whole life. While Anna was just added in because of his own preference.
Even so, Anna wasn’t gifted with an extraordinarily retentive memory, but her desire for knowledge and her self-initiative to learn was the strongest of all witches. He could often see her going through the books in his bookcase, six months down, he was afraid that there weren’t any books left that she still hasn’t read. In addition, her acceptance of new things and her logical way of thinking was also rare in this era.
Taking the primary mathematics and physics textbook from Scroll, Roland began to talk about today’s teaching content.
At the beginning when Roland taught addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, to a slightly more complex equation calculation, Anna’s ability to understand was significantly better than Scroll’s. But when they changed to physic, Scroll showed that she could remember Roland’s prior explanations word for word, and now only needed to slowly understand it. And Anna as well would also raise some questions from time to time.
For example, how elementary particle looked like, why the elementary particle that formed all livings things had nothing in common with each other, and so on…
Some of the questions Roland could answer, some of them he couldn’t.
For example, in the end what is magic?
He could only tell them his own speculation that he had previously come up with; that magic may be a kind of energy, similar to electrical energy or thermal energy, but which was only be accessible by witches. But it couldn’t be ruled out that after storing this kind of energy it could be even used by ordinary people.
Hearing this Anna had a thoughtful expression.
While teaching women, especially such outstnding type of women, time would always fly by fast. Unconsciously, the candles had already been replaced twice, and the new ones were also nearing their end.
Suddenly, Roland heard a subtle snore, and when he turned into its direction, he could see Nightingale lying unconscious, asleep on the sofa, perhaps this kind of lesson is just like a lullaby to her? No longer sheltered by her fog, her completely inelegant sleeping posture was exposed to the three of them.
The Prince shook his head dumbfounded, decided it was now time to end the class. He took off his coat and gently covered Nightingale, blowing out the candle and with a smile on his face as he led Anna and Scroll out of the room.